| In May 1961 the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized the first Freedom Ride, a bus journey by a group of young blacks and whites through the segregated South. The goal was to test the Boynton v. Virginia United States Supreme Court decision (1960) banning the segregation of interstate transportation facilities. The riders met with increasing resistance as they moved South, including mob attacks, the firebombing of one of their buses, and imprisonment. The original group of riders was joined along the way by reinforcements from CORE and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Nearly three weeks after their departure from Washington, D.C., the riders finally arrived in Jackson, Mississippi, under heavy National Guard escort. The military protection, orchestrated by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, demonstrated both the violent resistance and the national interest that their ride had provoked. |
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